


What If

by CuriosityRedux



Series: Dragon Drabbles Berk [23]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 22:37:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16752763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriosityRedux/pseuds/CuriosityRedux
Summary: It's that scene from the sequel. You know the one. Except Stoick didn't make it in time.





	What If

**What If**

**-**

Stoick once saw one of Toothless’ plasma blasts turn a hundred year old pine tree to splinters. The dust it stirred had lingered in the air long after the slivers of wood and ash rained down around them. He recalled the taste in his mouth now. The dryness. The smoke and pine with lingering notes of nauseatingly sweet sap. There were no trees for miles. Only ice. And yet he could taste it so clearly on his tongue. 

He heard Valka scream, and the noise was like the catalyst of his realization. It sent him to his hands and knees, panting into the chill as he watched his wife throw herself onto her only son’s corpse.

He knew his boy was dead. He’d seen the pine tree explode. 

Stoick tried to crawl to him, like an infant still learning how to use his limbs. Tears burned across his vision, blurring his sight, but when he blinked them away, new ones came to take their place. He swayed, arms that used to be stronger than steel now rubbery and weak. The ice burned his palms, but he was numb to the sensation. Trembling, he reached out to touch the wool of Hiccup’s pants’ leg. 

“My baby,” Valka was crying quietly, her words muffled by the hand she used to stifle her horror. “My son, my Hiccup.” Stoick thought of the fond ruffle she’d given the boy’s hair what had to have been just minutes ago. He’d thought–

_Thor Almighty._

He’d thought they were going to be a family again. 

A new shriek sounded behind him, echoed by a half-dozen gasps. He didn’t turn to see, but he knew it was Astrid. She made an ungraceful thump when she pitched herself from her dragon and slid on the ice in her haste. He could hear the uneasy beginnings of her sobs as she scrambled and slipped to the boy’s body. 

“Hiccup!” she shouted, collapsing to her knees at his shoulder. “Hiccup,  _no_!” Her eyes were wild, panicked, and she pressed her hands against his face, his neck, his chest, searching for a heartbeat or a sign of life Stoick knew she wouldn’t find. “You can’t! You  _can’t_!” Frantically shaking her head, the blonde dissolved into a heart-wrenching wail and pressed her forehead into Hiccup’s collarbone.

Stoick watched with lungs that felt like white-hot iron as Val stretched one shaking hand to rest on Astrid’s hair. 

He exhaled sharply at the sight, and his gaze cut away to the Night Fury still standing just yards away. Smoke curled from the beast’s panting maw, his eyes dangerous slits that had yet to turn away from the remains of his family. Stoick watched with revulsion as he blinked, shuddering, and then his pupils expanded. The dragon tilted his head. Pawed tentatively forward.

It sent him into a rage. His axe had been long lost in the snow, but that wouldn’t stop him. He stole the weapon from Astrid’s back and stood, holding it high above his head. “Not while I live!” he roared, feeling his wrath bleeding from his chest like the drops falling from the corner of his son’s lips. “ _Not while I live will you touch him!_ ”

The creature’s eyes were wide and fearful, shifting from the axe to Hiccup and back again. He made a high-pitched keening, shifting uncomfortably on his paws as if deciding whether or not approaching the boy’s body was worth the blade descending on his neck. The Night Fury took one step forward, and Stoick snarled, tensing and bringing the axe back. 

Then his wife cried, “Stoick, no!” and was tugging pleadingly at his arms. For a moment, he could only stand and wait for the memories to pass. The thousands of times he’d shaken her off, ignored her when she begged him not to. Valka had always asked him to spare the dragons, and he never did. And now she asked him to let this one live too.

“It’s his fault,” Stoick whimpered, already feeling his arms grow heavy under her desperate hands. 

“It’s not.” She sniffed, her voice thick with tears. 

“You–” The chief shook his head, heavy sobs wracking his shoulders. In the heartbeat it took him to catch his breath, he heard Astrid’s stomach-churning grief. “You were supposed to protect him!” Wet heat trailed down his cheeks and tangled in his beard. “You were supposed to keep him safe!”

Toothless backed away, but didn’t tear his eyes from Hiccup’s body. He began to make pathetic little barks, whining when his rider didn’t respond. Stoick let the axe fall, hearing a sudden wave of shrieking dragons rising around them, but he didn’t glance up. He didn’t have to look to know that Drago marched for Berk.

As he fell back to his hands and knees, Valka’s arms wrapped around him. She cried into his back, dampening his shirt. Then there were two more hands on him– one prosthetic, and Stoick wept all the more. 

“A chief protects his own,” he breathed between sobs, shaking his head. “A chief protects his own.”

Astrid was calling Hiccup’s name again. Val’s fingers dug into his shoulders with a terrible strength.

“You were supposed to protect him,” Stoick whispered, though he realized now who he was talking to. “You were supposed to keep him safe.”


End file.
